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Régis Labeaume, the king of Quebec City

As his fellow Quebec mayors face scandal, Régis Labeaume rules the provincial capital with grand visions and an iron fist. And he was just named No. 4 mayor in the world.

Quebec Mayor Régis Labeaume presided over the city's 400th anniversary celebrations and is pushing for a high-speed train. But his defining project would be to build an NHL-class arena. (MATHIEU BELANGER / LA PRESSE)

QUEBEC CITY—In a province that has been too accustomed to having its municipal leaders enwreathed in scandal, Quebec City’s Régis Labeaume has successfully cast himself as the model mayor not only in the country, but in the world.

Combative, sometimes crude and always colourful, the man with the kingly name, who is often ridiculed as the Napoleon of Quebec, rules the provincial capital with grand visions and an iron fist, causing city councillors, union officials, journalists and some voters to chafe.

Yet the vainglorious 56-year-old businessman is now three-quarters of the way through his second mayoral term and is watching his most powerful and longest-serving colleagues wither under the heat of the corruption searchlight that police, a high-profile inquiry and media are shining across Quebec.

But he stepped back into the media’s view earlier this month when an international think tank, The City Mayors Foundation, named him No. 4 in the world based on a flood of testimonials attesting to a new-found pride corresponding to his election in 2007 and his success in drawing attention, tourists and business to the region.

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Beneath the energetic and resurgent façade of Quebec’s second-largest city, though, critics offer more sinister testimonials that portray Labeaume as someone with the controlling streak of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the temperament of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford (who, incidentally, was also in the running for the World Mayor prize).

“Everyone is scared of confronting Régis because he will try to demolish you,” said Patrick Paquet, a city councillor who resigned last month from the mayor’s party, Equipe Labeaume, to sit as an independent. “He’ll attack your reputation, you’ll see it in the way you’re treated, in the way he comes out against you.”

There was a time when Labeaume, who did not respond to the Star’s interview requests, was relatively unknown, even in his hometown. When he first ran for the leadership of a municipal party in 2005, the former political aide to the sovereigntist Parti Québécois and mining millionaire merited barely a mention once the final votes were tallied.

The death of former Quebec City mayor Andrée Boucher in 2007, two years into her mandate, sparked a byelection in which Labeaume rallied independent city councillors to his side and won with 59 per cent of the ballots cast. A legend was born, and then reinforced in 2009 when he was re-elected with 80 per cent of the votes.

But there were clear signs even then of Labeaume’s now-famous temperament, particularly coming out of one heated 2008 council debate in which an opposition councillor, Michel Fecteau, asked rhetorically if the mayor had forgotten to take medication to control his anger.

It provoked a colourful — but sadly untranslatable (and in any case unprintable) — threat to essentially punch Fecteau in the face.

Such thuggish outbursts did not phase Paquet, a local businessman who was first elected in 2005 and was convinced to join the mayor’s political party, Equipe Labeaume, for the 2009 campaign.

Paquet wanted to cut red tape at city hall. So did the mayor. Paquet had pressing issues in his rapidly developing riding. Labeaume promised the wheels would turn faster if he was on the governing team.

“He was comforting and reassuring,” Paquet said. “He makes nice promises. I can’t deny it. I shared a lot of his vision when I joined Equipe Labeaume. I shared it completely.”

Things went well through the mini condominium and retail boom in his district. Requests for traffic installations, which can cost up to $250,000 and take years to approve, came through quickly.

But by 2010, Paquet was chafing under the restraint placed on members of Equipe Labeaume. Those who tried to mount opposition to Labeaume’s initiatives would be roughly brought back into line. Public votes at council meetings were also engineered to minimize dissent.

“He would say. . . one person can vote against, but I don’t want two or three because it won’t look good,” said Paquet, who decided to sit as an independent along with fellow councillor Ginette Picard-Lavoie in mid-December.

Labeaume, who has three children, including a girl adopted from South Korea, told an interviewer in 2007 that he was drawn into political life after hearing his eldest daughter announce that she wanted to go to school in Montreal. She believed there was no future for her in Quebec City. He set out to change the view held by his daughter, and by many others.

In 2008, Labeaume presided over the 400th anniversary of Quebec City’s settlement, with headline-grabbing concerts from Paul McCartney and Céline Dion. He launched a campaign for an as-yet-unrealized high-speed train to run between Quebec City and Windsor. He has spent $10 million to bring a Cirque du Soleil production to the city for a five-year run.

“We can’t say, ‘We will try it for one year,’” he said in 2009, countering those who said the city couldn’t support a permanent show. “That’s the mentality of a loser.”

Labeaume has also taken the all-in approach to what has become his defining project, a risky and potentially ruinous plan to build an NHL-class arena in the city.

It is a Field-of-Dreams gamble that says the sooner the city builds it, the sooner the beloved Quebec Nordiques franchise will return to the city that is still grieving its loss 18 years after the team moved to Denver.

The amphitheatre project started as a plan to spend $50 million, with the federal and provincial governments picking up the rest of the tab. The Quebec government agreed to kick in $200 million, but the Conservative government in Ottawa balked at the precedent such an investment would set.

Whether he was prescient, or simply influential, the Tories lost half of their Quebec caucus a few weeks later, including their three seats in the Quebec City area.

And Labeaume has pushed ahead with the project despite the financial concerns.

“If we end up with a price of $450 million, the city’s contribution is $250 million from the pockets of citizens,” said Paquet.

Compounding Paquet’s worry for the city’s financial health is the difficulty, he said, Labeaume’s administration has had behind the scenes drawing up a plan to get public finances in check, to balance the budget, to pay down the debt.

“The problem is that if we buy a big present, we have to cut elsewhere, but we’re not cutting anything.”

Not exactly true. Labeaume has so far cut the number of municipal councillors down to 27 from 37, arguing it is a way to save money. The cuts will go deeper in municipal elections this fall, when just 21 seats will be contested.

But such details tend to fall off the radar when you raise the spectre of the return of NHL hockey to the birthplace of the Nordiques.

As early as 2009, Université Laval communications Prof. Claude Cossette identified Labeaume’s path to popularity as one of the oldest and most successful political strategies.

“It’s not complicated,” he told Le Devoir at the time, invoking the Roman satirist Juvenal. “He gives the people bread and circuses.”

Make sure people are fed and give them lots of entertainment at the amphitheatre. It worked for Roman Emperor Augustus. And for now, it’s doing the trick for Emperor Labeaume, as well.

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